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Freeciv Founded 20 Years Ago Today (freeciv.org)

Posted by timothy on from the unproductive-member-of-society dept.

Andreas(R) writes to note that the Freeciv project today turns 20. The GPL'd project "was founded on November 14 1995, by Peter Joachim Unold, Claus Leth Gregersen and Allan Ove Kjeldbjerg. The three Danish students created this open source strategy game while studying computer science at Aarhus University. Today, 20 years later the founders of the project have been interviewed to find out about the early history of Freeciv."

Not that many games have their own officially designated port numbers, which says something about Freeciv's tenacity.

22 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Feedback welcome! by Andreas(R) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm one of the current developers of the Freeciv web client. Feel free to ask any questions about Freeciv in this thread. We are always looking for more developers to help improve the game.

    1. Re:Feedback welcome! by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hi Andreas,

      I'm a big fan of Civ games, and I think I have played them all, from Civ 1-5 to the Call of Powers, Freeciv, AlphaCentauri and C-evo. One thing I often wonder about is the striking disparity between the quality of the AI's in these games. Strangely enough, it seems that for some reason the AI of the community games is usually much, much stronger than the commercial versions. Experienced players can get a good challenge on even ground playing Freeciv or C-evo, whereas in commercial Civ games ramping up the difficulty usually means giving bonuses and cheats to the AI.

      Why are game companies so bad at writing a decent AI for a civ game? Or why is the community so good at it?
      Freeciv is open source - and all Civ games are very similar in the core aspects. You'd think the problem of implementing a good AI has been "solved" for this type of game. Yet the AI of the latest game in the series Civ-5 is again ridiculously incompetent.

    2. Re:Feedback welcome! by hankwang · · Score: 2

      in commercial Civ games ramping up the difficulty usually means giving bonuses and cheats to the AI.

      It's at least 10 years ago that I last played Freeciv, but I recall that back then, Freeciv AI was also cheating at the higher difficulty levels, by getting resources cheaper and by being able to peek into enemy cities. It didn't matter that much to me, I never got good enough to bother with the higher difficulty levels - and it was still quite a few all-nighters that I pulled playing it.

      However, from a brief look at Freeciv AI documentation, I get it that nowadays the AI is not cheating, and just gets handicaps at lower difficulty levels.

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
    3. Re:Feedback welcome! by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I'm one of the current developers of the Freeciv web client. Feel free to ask any questions about Freeciv in this thread. We are always looking for more developers to help improve the game.

      Andreas

      First things first - thank you to the entire Freeciv team for bringing this game up to where it is today!!! I'm not a developer, and therefore, I salute y'all!!!

      There were some things that I wanted to mention and suggest, as a means of developing the game further.

      1. In the game, there have been occasions when I've found things about various nations inaccurate, and therefore tried to fix them, retaining the same template within the files within the NATIONS folder. Sometimes, some of the cities listed may be wrong (as in inapplicable to that nation), sometimes, the titles of the rulers may be wrong (like the term 'Maharaja', while valid for Indians, would not be valid for 'Mughals' since the latter was Islamic), and also, some of the breakaway states are invalid. So I'd try and edit such files as root, but when I try running them under the game, it freezes. I suggest making those files more flexible. Note that I don't use SDL or any of the special Freeciv scripting, and just run the game from the icons.

      2. Right now, there are just 4 types of architectures, which is inadequate given that there are 500+ nations that are being cited. Suggest tossing in a lot more to cover the wide range of civilizations that existed, like the Mayas, Incas, Islamic empires, Asian (the Asian architecture shown is only valid for Chinese, Korean and Japanese, but not South or SouthEast Asia.)

      3. I'll admit I cheat a lot ;-) - but mainly to create scenarios that approximate civilizations as they existed in a point in history, and then play the game normally as one of them - w/ as many or as few cities as they had. Sometimes, while editing a civilization in the cheat mode - such as changing a nation - I get to pick the nation, but then don't have its list of rulers, as listed. So having that would be useful

      4. Again in cheat mode, if I start a scenario as a different player and go into cheat mode, it by default selects the first item in the list, as opposed to what I'm currently playing. Any plans to address that?

      5. I play FreeCiv on my PC-BSD laptop, but on a Windows laptop w/ Steam, I play Civilization IV. I'd like to see some of the Civilization IV concepts imported to FreeCiv - particularly religion. Also, while you are at it, associate every nation w/ a particular religion, or a group of religions. So that you don't see a Holy Roman Empire embracing Shintoism, or the Aztecs embracing Islam. You could also tie up religions w/ architectures

      6. Expanding on the above point, I'd like to see the best of Civilization IV and V brought to Freeciv. Maybe you can call that Freeciv 3?

      I look forward to further enhancements to the game. Also, while the current 2D game is great and presumably most portable, I'd like to see some of the 3D and multimedia special effects be available in Freeciv as an option for those who have great setups. Like being able to watch Wonder videos like in Civ I and II, as well as being able to view 3D effects of the landscape in Civ IV.

      All that said, thanks again for coming up w/ this great game.

    4. Re:Feedback welcome! by unixisc · · Score: 1

      One more thing I forgot - can you make Barbarians and Pirates fully playable players? Like I can select one of them at the start, but w/ some major handicaps - like I can't discover technology that develops cities or wonders, just military ones, if that, and also, I can't do any treaties w/ anyone (except Barbarians or Pirates)? Only advantage of this mode would be that I'd be free from Barbarian attacks ;-)

    5. Re:Feedback welcome! by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Andreas, one more thing. While the PC versions of the games are great - be it on Windows or Unix (Linux/BSD), the Android tablet version of the game sucks. Dunno which version it is, but it's very difficult to play, even at the Easy levels. Can the game be brought to the version 2.5 level?

    6. Re:Feedback welcome! by Some+nick+or+other · · Score: 1

      I imagine that happens because getting AI right is very hard and commercial game development is very much a matter of priorities. Unless the AI is *the* major selling point of a game, it gets improved until it's good enough and then the devs focus on other things.

      I've heard game AI development phrased as:

      1. Cheat.
      2. Never let the player catch you cheating.

      On the other hand, if an AI specialist comes across an open source game, he can start improving the AI if he feels like it. The game isn't being produced by a definite team for a definite deadline, so progress on non-AI things doesn't get delayed (or sped up, for that matter) by the AI specialist coming across the game and deciding to contribute. Thus (if I'm right about that), an open source game will generally have better AI, since it can afford to do so.

    7. Re:Feedback welcome! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      I'm not a Freeciv player or enthusiast, but the work you all have produced is some pretty cool stuff. It's really quite impressive (to me, at least).

      Congrats, and here's to another 20 years of development!

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    8. Re:Feedback welcome! by pamar · · Score: 1

      First of all: Thanks a lot!

      I find practically impossible to get prebuilt binaries for Mac OSX.

      I can run the windows version in a VM, but having a "native" version would be nice. Even if it trails a few minor versions behind.

      Any pointers?

    9. Re:Feedback welcome! by rp · · Score: 1

      I think you can have nation-specific technology trees with custom rulesets. That would allow you to do this.

    10. Re:Feedback welcome! by rocket+rancher · · Score: 1

      Hello Andreas,

      I've been a happy civ addict for decades now, and I've been playing free civ on my linux based systems since I first heard about it on the civ fanatics site back in the early 2000's. I think civ has had to evolve to remain competitive in the gaming market place, and the producers and developers who assumed the mantle after the initial market success at Microprose have done an excellent job at it. And I certainly include in that all the modders and the fine folks like you who gave us free civ and all the great mods that enhance and improve (and fix!) the game we love so much.

      But -- and I would really lilke a dev's opinion on this -- where does Civ go from here? To me, Civ started out as a resource management game, fun and absorbing at the same time. Multiplayer mode in CivNet extended that to something to share with friends and fellow civ fanatics online. But with civ 3, the resource management aspects of the game started to share the limelight with RPG elements. by the time of Civ 4, the resource management aspects of the game seemed to stop evolving, and the RPG elements started to get more and more of the developer's attention. By Civ 5, especially the BE version, the game stopped evolving along resource management lines, and seemed to be focussed by the devs on improving and enhancing the RPG elements. Is Civ going to continue to focus on RPG-style play at the expense of the resource management game?

  2. Non-gamer hooked by gwolf · · Score: 2

    I was never much of a gamer, so it was surprising I was so hooked into Sid Meier's Civilization in the early 90s. I started toying with Linux by 1995 and using it for serious work starting in 1996. And, yes, FreeCiv was a reason for me to be happy adopting Linux on the desktop.

    Thanks a lot for many hours of fun!

    1. Re:Non-gamer hooked by unixisc · · Score: 1

      In collage, one of my friends introduced me to Civ I. We would spend nights and weekends at our computer center or in our department playing, and return home in the wee hours of the morning. It was fun playing for hours and finally either getting to Alpha Centauri or conquering the world.

      The first times I tried Freeciv, I couldn't get it to install on Linux. It did work under Windows. However, last year, when I got PC-BSD on my laptop, FreeCiv was one of the things I could get from the AppCafe, and I installed it. It was pretty good, and has since gotten better. I've listed above all suggestions I had for the team to take the game to greater levels.

  3. Port numbers by unixisc · · Score: 1

    What exactly is the significance of FreeCiv having its own port number? Does that enable anything, other than in the multi-player version of the game?

  4. Re:Happy 20th birthday by unixisc · · Score: 1

    I forgot to add - to the Freeciv team, many happy returns!!!

  5. Port assignments are a bit harder to get today by kevmeister · · Score: 2

    I'd say that having its own port assignment speaks mostly to the project's age... back when getting a port assigned just required a quick note to Jon Postel.

    --
    Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
    1. Re:Port assignments are a bit harder to get today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'd say that having its own port assignment speaks mostly to the project's age... back when getting a port assigned just required a quick note to Jon Postel.

      The Freeciv port was registered in 2006. Jon Postel died in 1998.

    2. Re:Port assignments are a bit harder to get today by rp · · Score: 1

      Still, I don't think it required more than a short email exchange.

  6. my contribution by Xtifr · · Score: 1

    I've made one contribution to this game. A very minor one, but one I'm proud of nonetheless. I persuaded them to change their motto from: "Cause Civilization Should Be Free" to "'Cause Civilization Should Be Free". The missing apostrophe was just more than I could stand. :)

  7. Claus Leth Gregersen by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 1

    I never played FreeCiv, but I knew Claus (virtually) as he was working on it. I was a player (known as "Mort") on AnotherMUD, which was another project Claus worked on.

    Good to bring back memories, although MUDding could have easily cost me my degree... ;)

    -- Pete

    --
    Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
  8. Re:Freeciv's tenacity? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Freeciv, while borrowing from the concepts, has some major differences from the way Sid Meier's game was played. For one, the client-server model is not there on the original series. Freeciv also has 500+ civilizations, as opposed to just a handful that there is b/w all the versions of Civ I-V combined. There are also many flexible variations one can do in the client options - from size of continents, whether barbarians are played or not, whether to put different players on different continents, et al.

    I play this game on PC-BSD. The originals can't be played on it - I'm not sure whether they play w/ WINE. Freeciv plays on Windows, Linux, BSD - only place it's really done badly is on Android. Civ V can be played on SteamOS - but that's about it.

  9. Re:Freeciv's tenacity? by unixisc · · Score: 1

    IV actually is pretty good - haven't tried III or V. Only thing - I prefer the 500+ nation option that's there in Freeciv. Only thing I wish for - a variety of features that I listed in response to Andreas' post above. Other than that, Freeciv is awesome